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In the decades since the abdication of Edward VIII – formerly Prince of Wales, subsequently Duke of Windsor, and additionally, as The Crown has so vividly reminded us, Bad Uncle David the Nazi – the general view of the unhappy couple has not altered: she was entirely unsuitable, he was a weak fool, and their life together was a gilded hell.

Their relationship has been exhaustively described. Frances Donaldson, for example, argued that her attraction for him was that she enabled him to give up the monarchy, which he had never wanted, while his for her was precisely...